Japan and South Korea

A 100-year war of words

IN SOUTH KOREA August 29th is a date of national humiliation. On that day 100 years ago, the nation fell under the cosh of Japanese colonisers whose coercive annexation treaty stated bluntly: “His Majesty the Emperor of Korea makes the complete and permanent cession to His Majesty the Emperor of Japan of all rights of sovereignty over the whole of Korea.” Japan's heavy hand was lifted in 1945 and it has since made occasional gestures of contrition. Yet it took a century for a Japanese leader to admit that colonial rule was imposed against the will of Koreans.

Japan seems to be trying a bit harder to improve relations with its closest neighbour. Its prime minister, Naoto Kan, offered a “heartfelt apology” for Japan's actions, a few weeks ago, as part of a broad summer effort to show it is both genuinely remorseful and keen on a “future-oriented” relationship. For the first time in 45 years, Japan has offered to send some precious imperial loot back to Seoul. And on August 15th none of Mr Kan's cabinet joined an annual pilgrimage to the Yasukuni shrine honouring Japan's war dead–the first time since the 1980s that there has been such a show of sensitivity about Japan's war crimes.

Some reports (mostly in South Korea) even suggest that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a big Japanese firm, may discuss compensating 300 Koreans who were forced, as girls, to work unpaid in an aircraft factory in Japan during the war. That may go nowhere, but even mention of individual payouts for forced labour has been taboo since a bilateral reparations treaty in 1965.

These gestures have taken place amid strong diplomatic Japanese backing for South Korea's tough stance towards North Korea over the sinking of the Cheonan, one of its naval frigates, in March. In a rare act of security co-operation in July, Japan also sent military observers on joint American-South Korean naval exercises.

South Korea has reacted cautiously. Its business-minded president, Lee Myung-bak, also wants closer bilateral ties, and saw Mr Kan's apology as helpful. But historical grievances still matter hugely to South Koreans. It was not lost on them that Mr Kan pointedly failed to direct his apology to North Korea, which suggests some political expediency. Nor has Japan conceded any claim to sovereignty over an island claimed by it and South Korea alike. An editorial in the Korea Herald has urged South Koreans to keep their humiliation “etched in stone”. Yet it also called for more co-operation with Japan.

The best prospects may be over trade. Since 2004 free-trade talks between Japan and South Korea have been blocked by domestic concerns in each country over heavily protected rice industries and car markets. Yet bilateral trade has doubled in the past decade, and business lobbies are urging their governments to resume talks.

Cutting a trade deal could eventually help the countries put the tortured past behind them, especially if the governments could include China, which has its own deep historical grievance with Japan. But that would require strong Japanese leaders, able both to defy nationalists and protectionist farmers at home and to offer evidence of repentance abroad. South Korea's government, too, would have to persuade its people that they should focus on the an enterprising future rather than the past's tragic victims.

I find it simply farcical when Westerners who know very little about the true origins of the long-held Korean hostility against Japan dismiss it as a light, once-upon-a-time happening. As a person born and raised in Korea, I deeply sympathize with the elderly who actually went through the Japanese occupation years as well as virtually almost all of the citizens who recognize the unforgettable scars that my country still bears in evidence of the past sufferings. This article, not to mention almost every other writing by foreigners (largely from the West) on the Korea-Japan relationship, seems to portray Korean people as some ignorant, grudge-holding lot who don't let bygones be bygones. The fact of the matter is that the Japanese government has long been reluctant to accept, let alone apologize for, the atrocities they committed against innocent Korean civilians not only during the 35 years of the Japanese occupation but also during the Second World War.
Starting with the assassination of the well-known, beloved Empress Myeongseong, the Japanese carried out cultural genocide against significant Korean customs, values, and so on, the most important of which was the valued Korean language. Numerous Korean texts that held enormous cultural value were trashed or altered to justify the Japanese colonization. People were forced to change their original names to Japanese ones and the use of Korean was harsly suppressed in schools all over the country. Now, here's what's even more horrific: Japanese soldiers were especially cruel to common villagers who were defenseless against the former's brutal treatment, which ranged from arbitrary execution, rape, forced labor, and clandestine military medical experimentation. During World War II, many Korean women, the majority of whom were teenaged girls, were forced into Japanese military brothels and were labeled "comfort women"; they were subjected to inhuman sexual slavery and physical abuse. The handful of survivors from this living hell, now very old and fragile, still suffer from serious illnesses, the remnants of those past years.
Now, let me come down to the bone of the problem. What infuriates the Korean people is the fact that the Japanese government has largely denied these charges, whether that be the atrocities committed during the occupation or WWII (the existence of Japanese military brothels, for example, is an established fact that some Japanese just won't admit), refused to pay reparations for the comfort women, and even meddled with their school textbooks. The Japanese government has covered up many incidents that would put in in a disagreeable position across the globe. Data falsification is rampant as well. The fact that some ex-millitary generals of Japan who were the very people who committed the war crimes still sit at the high society of Japan and lead convenient lives when many former comfort women suffer from fractured hip, missing teeth, bowed legs, and pretty much every other horrible sickness you can imagine is outrageous.
Unless the Japanese government unequivocally apologizes for all of its crimes and stops trying to bury the past, we Koreans' negative view of a world superpower won't change a bit.

Standard joke in the Japanese armed forces is that the quickest way to end the Second Korean War would be to send the Japanese forces as part of the UN Army, at which moment the two Koreas would immediately agree on a truce and begin a concerted attacck on Japan....

As a resident of South Korea for over 6 years, I often found the Korean attitude regressive. When I visited Seokguram and the national museum, in Seoul, the tour guides and exhibits dwelled only on the Japanese occupation, rather than any Korean history. I have also always noticed that very little has been related on the Dutch “comfort women” and the suffering of the Dutch in general from the Japanese occupation. The Dutch have not dwelled or nursed their hate with the same zeal as the Koreans. After the war, my Grandfather, a father of a total of 12 children, took in a German boy as part of a government program to help feed German children at risk of malnutrition. Imagine a Korean family doing the same to help feed an innocent Japanese boy or girl!

Hating the Japanese is a netizen and government activity however, tourism, trade and even intermarriage (more of which occurs and has occurred than any Korean would let you believe) will keep their countries close.

I just hope to visit Seokguram and/or the national museum in Seoul and I hope to discover Korean history and culture, which shouldn’t be defined as a hatred towards any one group.

South Korea’s, anonymous, “netizens” will bombard this article and my comment with emotion and other “facts” , in dubious English but I hope realities will prevail and Korean identity can become more positive.

Unless you see the sickening images of Korean civilians (many of them nationalists fighting against the cultural genocide and the oppressive Japanese rule) murdered in the most heartless ways and their honorable deaths mocked and dirtied (there's a picture of Japanese soldiers greening with the skulls of dead Koreans spiked on long sticks); unless you hear the heartbreaking cries of a former comfort woman humiliated by a Japanese attempt to cover up her protest for Japan to apologize for her past sufferings; and unless you really understand the whole generation of Koreans holding out their national flags on the Independence Day, you won't know why Koreans still hold on to the past. It's something you probably won't ever understand unless you're a person born on the Korean soil and raised to love the country as it is.
I won't lie and say ALL Japanese people are in denial of their war criems. There are also intelligent Japanese people who recognize their government's faults and even protest against the notorious cover-up attempts. I'm not supporting any racial/ethnic stereotype or generalization on the whole country of Japan.
But, again, what Koreans want is the formal, unequivocal apologies of the Japanese government. And an official war-crimes tribunal that would actually punish the former perpetrators, some of whom still enjoy comfortable lives.

to ýºý- this article might seem that way to you- that it portrays the Koreans as dumb and dogged about things that don't matter anymore, but i think that westerners are a bit more discerning than you give them credit for. We've all seen WWII movies, heard the stories of Japanese cruelty, and are capable of understanding how the story went. The Japanese were cruel in most everything they did. If anything, this article paints the Japanese as the dumb and dogged ones, and about things that matter greatly.

The point in the article really is about just that. Japan is a huge economic force in Asia. The kind of force with whom free trade deals benefit everyone. But to get these very necessary deals done requires openness of the sort that Germany has displayed for the past 60 years, the sort of openness that doesn't go down well in Japan, and indeed can't go down at all without strong leaders willing to confront nationalists in a xenophobic nation (see Japan's immigration policies, and the treatment of native Koreans for examples of a xenophobic nation).

I understand, maybe, your frustration with outsiders view of the situation. But you must understand outsiders frustration with the actual situation. Here stand the two most powerful democracies in Asia, together capable of a strong challenge/ moderating influence upon China's more alarming ambitions, yet nothing gets accomplished because there is no trust. Japan is a very different nation than it was 100 years ago, nothing like that will come from them again.

The onus is on the Japanese to atone for past wrongs, of course, but there are other matters on the horizon that can be dealt with constructively that don't need to be predicated on a total reckoning of Japan's misdeeds (which given the weakness of the government isn't about to happen anytime soon and is then, kind of counteractive to ask for).

As a Chinese common people, I disagree your comment that "Japan is a very different nation than it was 100 years ago, nothing like that will come from them again" strongly.

Yes, Japan is different than 100 years ago, like no one can be same after 100 years. But the different is not too much. Even today many Japan politicians keep going to Yasukuni Shrine to pay respect for war criminals year by year, and considerable Japanese support them to do that. It is hard to imagine any German politicians go to Berlin or Nuremberg to pay respect for Hitler, Himmler, or Goerling without punish. But Japan society allowed. Like ýºý said, Chinese and South Korean people just need "the formal, unequivocal apologies of the Japanese government", which we never get.

Return to this article. The point of it is economic is important enough to force Japan and Korea (and China) leaders to focus on "an enterprising future rather than the past". Yes, I agreed an enterprising future is good. But if the cost is to forget past, the future will be not "enterprising" for anymore.

"ýºý " makes the same points that Japanese nationalists bring forth when "ignorant" "foreigners" dare to point out their criminal behavior during WWII.
In short, "ýºý "'s thinking is the same of the people she condemns.

Dear Italic,
In which way specifically am I making "the same points that Japanese nationalists bring forth when "ignorant" "foreigners" dare to point out their criminal behavior during WWII"? The claims I've made so far have nothing to do with the Western powers' abilities to what you stated. Did I say ALL Westerners know nothing about the reasons behind the Korean antagonism of Japan? In my first few sentences, I specifically addressed "Westerners who know very little about" it. I did not make any sort of generalization on the basis of the foreigners' intelligence. I said "almost every other writing by foreigners (largely from the West)". Do "almost every other" and "largely" mean the same as "every single" and "all of them" to you? I admit that the words I used could be subjective, considering that those words only apply to the articles, even though many in number, that I've raed. But if you can find one piece of writing by a Westerner that accurately portrays Korea under Japanese rule or Korea-Japan relations in general, I will applaud you for your incredible knowledge and change that "almost every other writing" part to "many writings".

This is like a thug breaking into your house, beating you and killing your father and your wife. Now the guy apologizes 100 times for beating you but won't admit his killings. Maybe you find this acceptable but the Chinese and Koreans don't.

Those who ask the question "Why can't Japan do the same as (West) Germany?" tends to focus on the former with less attention paid to the latter.

Legally speaking, the one big difference between post-war (West) Germany and Japan was that Japan had signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty back in 1952, and then followed up with individual treaties with those countries that were not signatory to San Francisco Peace Treaty (Soviet Union in 1956, South Korea in 1960, and People's Republic of China in 1972). Legally speaking, each individual demand for direct compensation is a treaty violation (the treaties were signed, from the Japanese Viewpoint, to prevent such things happening in the first place), as each treaty specifically renounced all claims for wartime compensation between individuals and each nation (That's why there were settlement clauses in each of these treaties after all). The question here is, what's the point of having peace treaties if one party continues to actively promote its citizens to violate it?

Let's keep things in prospective: Japanese had occupied Korea while Americans still keep bases in Okinawa... Japanese are not too eager to apologize for brutal occupation, but US is also not in a hurry to apologize and pay reparations for the two nuclear bombs...

I've been to the Yasukuni shrine. I think it's extremely important to Japan's foreign affairs that its leaders stay as far away from it as possible. The whole place screams hard-line Japanese, but it's just my interpretation. I encourage others to form their own conclusions based off of their own experience.

I also see this as a Japanese soft power play, though not quite on the conspiratorial level. It will be much easier for Japan to fix relations with South Korea than China. China's government is much more powerful and less eager to back down in reconciliation with Japan. South Korea, meanwhile, needs to gather international support in its homeland defense effort and additionally needs Japan as a trading partner. Lee has faults, but he's the right leader at the right time for South Korea.

China needs to drop North Korea like a bad habit. Supporting the DPRK is temporarily solves the problem of US military threat in the region, but threatens to produce a permanent problem of regional distrust among Koreans and Japanese alike. I'm not sure that it's worth it anymore.

"It's something you probably won't ever understand unless you're a person born on the Korean soil and raised to love the country as it is."

As you said, the Koreans are raised to love Korea and dislike Japan -- this is what is wrong. The feelings of the older generation are understandable, but it is outrageous that young people are being raised up the same way.

And I disagree with indoctrinating the young to dislike a particular nation everywhere -- it doesn't just happen in Korea against the Japanese, but I would expect that in every occupied country against the occupiers. The Baltic States towards the Russians is another example to join the Koreans toward Japan here.

To avoid misunderstanding, I must say I don't think now the Japanese people is warlike or support war. And I must say I never hate any Japanese people or normal soilder, even for the war criminals.

For Yasukuni shrine I know a little about its history. For the starting, I think it is okay. I agreed that country need a place to memory persons who dead for country's future. And I can accept people to pay respect for normal soilder even they dead as invader. But for the big bad guys, it is difference.